


Coursework for a Relationship Capstone

by Pookaseraph



Series: CMUniverse [18]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Carnegie Mellon, Erik is a poopyhead, F/M, Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pittsburgh, Protective Older Brothers, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:49:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony deals with cranky girlfriends, cranky dating-in-laws, and cranky brothers. Suddenly he's become a bit of a grownup and no one's more surprised than Tony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coursework for a Relationship Capstone

Tony prodded his homework for one of his robotics courses. His teacher had thought it would be incredibly clever to give the homework the Monday after Thanksgiving, rather than giving Tony, who had nothing but free time over the holiday, the chance to work on it early. It wasn't that he was a blisteringly responsible student - he was honestly a bit of a slacker sometimes - but that meant he liked to spread his slacking out. Thanksgiving would have been so much better if he'd been ignoring his homework.

Maybe he'd grab Charles and they'd have a late dinner. Charles was having a bad week. Tony had certain ways of fixing Charles' issues, sometimes they involved cuddling his baby brother to sleep, sometimes they involved wheelchair racing, sometimes they just involved listening while Charles yammered his head off, but this time... Tony actually knew what the issue _was_ and he had no fucking clue how to fix it himself. To be fair, Charles' problem was also his problem to some extent. He summed it up rather succinctly as 'Erik is a poopyhead'.

Tony had a single line item plan to address this problem: get Erik and Charles laid together. Normally he would have seen this as the solution to almost any problem, but actually he knew his plan was brilliant. Charles wanted to have sex with Erik, Erik wanted to have sex with Charles, it was a win-win. _Charles_ was feeling all respectful of Erik's issues and Erik's need to take it slow, but all Tony could see, from where he sat, was that his baby brother was mad with love and smitten and his truly epic wonderfulness was not being repaid in kind. Erik was getting dangerously close to one of the things he'd promised never to do: break Charles' heart.

Someone knocked on the door.

He stood, stretched, and pulled open the door, finding himself with an armful of redhead who was kissing him rather soundly.

"Mmph!"

Anya guided him back into his room, closed the door, and then spun him so he was up against the door, his hands around her and on her and hers on him. She was angry, it didn't take him long to realize. Her kisses were bruising, her fingers curled hard into his biceps, and she was pressed so tight against him he was having trouble breathing. It was scorchingly, blisteringly hot, until he felt her tears on his cheeks.

"Anya?" He said, muffled by her mouth. A moment later he gently pushed her a few inches back. "Hey." He kissed an earlobe. "Not that I'm opposed to having an aggressively sexy girlfriend visit me at any time but... something's wrong."

"Can't I just have crappy coping mechanisms for a few hours?"

He laughed, he actually laughed, and then wrapped his arms around her and kissed her temple, nose nuzzling into her hair. "I know a thing or two about crappy coping mechanisms, dear. You might be able to pull it off." He locked the door and dragged her towards the bed, just slowly, nothing particularly sexy, it was just the only place in the dorm to sit.

They both climbed on, and then Anya straddled his lap and used him as a full size body pillow, pressed against him, forehead pressed to his shoulder, and sniffled.

"Erik hates you, he gets so worked up about us having sex, and kissing, and _everything_. And he used to be a big old opportunist, you know?" Anya lifted her head and leaned back enough so they could look in each other's eyes. "Like it's fine that he had a half-dozen girlfriends but me having _one_ boyfriend is the end of the world."

"Big brothers are weird about their siblings," Tony said, finally. "Believe me, the idea of Charles getting laid fills me with a bit of dread as much as I want him to be happy."

"Why can't Erik be happy for me?"

Because he was a closet case, and apparently taking his issues out on his sister. "Because... of I'm sure a lot of reasons. I'm not sure." Tony ran his fingers along her sides. "Look... if Charles were dating someone like me I'd have a few second thoughts as well."

"But you're nice."

He was a recently reformed slag. Apparently Anya was taking a course in mind reading, because she picked up on his thoughts immediately.

"You're with me, you're... respecting me... why can't he see that?"

"His knowledge ends when the door closes. As far as he knows I've been shagging you senseless for months."

"He eavesdropped on us, about me wearing a kilt for you." Anya frowned above him. "He acted like that was super slutty."

Tony tried to be sympathetic, he really did, but he sighed instead, fingers resting lightly on Anya's thighs. "He owes you an apology." Not that he thought Erik would do so; the man was not much for apologizing.

Anya snorted.

"Is this your way of saying you want to spend the night?" She nodded in response. "Alright. I have to finish a bit of homework. In the morning I'll drive you up to school, I don't have class that early."

"I can't wait for college." Anya climbed off him and went about her way in getting ready for bed, or at least she changed into PJs and raided his EZ-Mac stash, had a banana and a spoonful of ice cream, and then brushed out her hair and her teeth while Tony tried to concentrate in the midst of...

_Domesticity._

He finished up his homework an hour or so later, Anya tucked in his bed reading The Island in an outfit that was clearly supposed to have been both sexy and practical, a tanktop undershirt and baggy pajama bottoms. He stripped down to his boxers, brushed his teeth and climbed into bed.

A moment later Anya marked her place in the book and snuggled into Tony's chest. His arms were around her in an instant.

"I'm sorry I didn't call."

"I'm just glad I was here, I was about to go cuddle Charles instead."

"You two are weird sometimes."

"We are."

"You're... a package deal."

"Yeah." He wasn't certain he'd ever put it that way, but they were. He was never going to get rid of Charles, even if he'd wanted to. "He's too important to me."

"I want to go out with him more, maybe Erik too... just so he can maybe see..."

He almost laughed, instead he tugged her closer and flicked the lights, tugging her under the blankets. "You want to go out with your brother and my brother?"

"Well... he's your other-other half."

"My... other-other half?"

"Well, you already have an other half." Anya snuggled against his chest and kissed him somewhere near his collar bone. "Right?"

The Domesticity was slightly stifling. "Yes. Yes I do." And yet he found he didn't mind. He kissed her forehead. "Anya... I..."

He crushed her to his chest, forcing a slight squeak out of her.

"I... think I love you."

He thought perhaps she should have been offended that he only _thought_ he loved her, but instead she giggled a little and forced him onto his back. "I know."

"You can't be all Han Solo about this! I made a serious confess--" And then she pinned him, mouth on his, very hot, and very hard, and he shut up.

The two of them didn't come up for air for several minutes when Anya pulled away and rested her head on his chest. "I'm pretty sure I love you too, Tony."

"I kno--" Anya pinched his lips closed.

Maybe he should have felt different, but he actually felt pretty good. He felt solid, together, and warm. Part of the warmth was likely because Anya was now using him as a full body pillow, but it couldn't account for everything. He brushed his fingers down her back. "You know..." He brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. "This is really damn good. We should do this more often."

"Mom would kill me, but... yeah. We'll make it happen, alright?"

"Of course." They would make it happen.

His warm and particularly gooey feeling lasted all the way through their morning showers, and him driving Anya up to school and dropping her two blocks from school before returning back to the parking lot to find a particularly irascible Erik Lehnsherr in his usual parking space. He parked and stepped out of the car.

"Did Anya spend the night?" Erik asked, not even bothering to say hello first.

"She did."

Erik seemed to deflate slightly. "Good." Tony's eyebrows threatened to mate with his hairline. "What I _mean_ is that I'm glad she was here instead of somewhere else, with someone who I couldn't glower at."

Tony shrugged and rolled the door closed. "You're buying me breakfast if you're going to be inappropriately overprotective and big brotherly at me." It was too early for this.

"Does that mean if you're the overprotective big brother I get a free breakfast?"

"I guess." Tony was confused by the question. "Does that mean we are going to discuss Charles instead of Anya?"

Erik nodded, awkward. "I'll deal with Anya later. It's not about you."

Tony wasn't certain if that was encouraging or not. "She didn't deserve what you said."

"I know."

"She deserves an _apology_."

Erik nodded again, and Tony couldn't help but but feel a bit lost. He was more used to Erik fighting with him, arguing with him, and challenging him. This Erik had all the fight taken out of him. "I feel..." The two of them slowly started to work towards campus proper, rather than the Morewood lot. "I'm losing him."

It was a loss of Erik's own making; that was Tony's immediate thought, but he politely held the thought inside rather than saying that to Erik. "You will if this keeps up."

"He's hurting." It was not so startlingly aware, but Tony would take any moment of awareness from Erik at this point.

"Yes."

"I'm hurting him."

"Also yes."

Erik grabbed strands of his own hair between his fingers, ruffling his hair, obviously thinking. "You don't know what it's like."

Tony didn't know what 'it' encompassed; on many counts, Erik would have been right. He had no idea what it was like to be concerned about parental disapproval anymore, that had been replaced with Charles. He had no idea what it was like to be gay, he was almost entirely straight and the one person in the world whose opinion he cared about wouldn't mind if he'd been bisexual or gay. He _did_ know what it was like to freak out about commitment, he knew how strained Charles had been before he came out to Tony, he knew that all, not quite personally, but as close to personally as he could.

Still, he nodded. Erik, it seemed, needed to vent, not be told that Tony understood.

"I want to..." Erik's fists clenched, presumably not indicating some latent desire for slightly more kinky gay sex, but Tony got the picture. "And yet every time I do..." He crossed his arms, tucked them away under his armpits and just scowled. "I don't want to disappoint anyone."

The choice of a low blow or a comforting word was difficult to make. "What about disappointing Charles?"

Erik closed his eyes even as they continued to walk towards the omelet bar. "And myself, and my mother, and my brother and sisters..."

"Anya, I don't think you have to worry about."

"She said you made her watch Glee."

Tony shrugged. "It was either that or Brokeback and I'd rather avoid the blisteringly closeted and tragic."

Erik twitched.

He stood behind what he said.

"I can't really blame you," Erik answered. "Just... coming out to Charles was bad enough."

"Even with the large quantity of naked positive reinforcement?"

"That doesn't help me come out to my _mom_."

"Then don't come out to your mom." As far as Tony was concerned that was the easy answer.

"But..." Erik looked at him, obviously far more confused by Tony's solution than he really thought a genius had any right to be. Maybe he should reevaluate his impression of Erik's smarts. "I do have to. How am I going to get over this fear, otherwise?"

"Come out to Anya, hell, come out to me."

"You already know I'm..."

Tony arched an eyebrow in Erik's general direction. "An engineering major?"

Erik scowled again.

"Live in Squirrel Hill?"

No response.

"The overprotective big brother of my girlfriend?"

"You know what I mean," Erik ground out between clenched teeth, and Tony continued the assault as the pair of them got to the omelet bar and into line. It was Wednesday, not a prime day for bothering to wake up early, so the line was short.

"I'm really not sure what you do mean, Erik."

"I'm gay." The words were hissed out between clenched teeth.

"Here I thought you and Charles were just playing parcheesi." He only let Erik grit his teeth a few moments more before he put an arm around Erik's shoulder and squeezed. "Thanks. I know that wasn't easy."

Erik coughed and tugged away, ordering his omelet while Tony tried to decide where he wanted to go from there.

"My point," he continued when they were sitting down next to each other with their omelets and coffee, "is that you don't have to climb... gay Everest; Charles just doesn't want to feel like you're shoving him back into the closet. He hasn't been in the closet since he was fifteen, and I'm pretty sure he'd only been sure he was bi for a few months before that."

"I've been pretty sure since I was eighteen." He did his best to nod, encouragingly, so Erik would continue. "I'd had a few girlfriends, but it just never seemed to work. I mean call me ignorant but I thought being gay was just... for theater people."

Tony almost snorted his coffee. "I'm more dramatic than Charles."

"So it was hard to link up... _that_ with just wanting..." Erik didn't continue. 

"Frottage? Wheelchair rides? Dude provided fellatio?"

"How can you just...?" Erik responded, all but hissing through his teeth again. "I thought you weren't even bi."

"I'm bi in solidarity. Hypothetically bi. I'm hung up on this one girl right now, though." Erik didn't give Tony's declaration the appropriate sense of gravity, so Tony just continued to yammer. "And I can talk about sex because I'm comfortable, there's nothing hotter than having some lady - or gentleman - with you who you want to just do bad things with, after talking about those things. I thought you and Charles would have talked about at least some wheelchair rides."

"Yes, Tony, yes, but I'm not going to talk to you about that..." Erik looked down at his food again. He then whined and put his head on the table. "Why?"

Tony patted his head, but didn't really answer with any words of wisdom. "Charles isn't going to push you on this, Erik. Someone has to."

"Do you think Anya would freak out?"

"No." Honestly he liked to think he'd set that up rather well. "As much as I'm sure you'd find it hard to believe, I didn't have to do much to convince your sister of the fundamental lack of perversion of a gay relationship. She's a very thoughtful and deliberate person."

"More than me."

"No doubt."

"I needed him to be mine."

Tony let Erik sit there, a fond expression plastered on his face, for a few moments. "I know the feeling."

"Can you... not tell him we talked about this?"

That gave Tony some amount of pause. He was not, in general, a fan of keeping Charles in the dark. He tried to make it a policy of complete honest with Charles. "Why?"

"I just need... I need to think, I need some time, and I don't want him to think it's just going to suddenly be alright just because I'm trying for him."

"Charles does enjoy his hope." Tony prodded his own food for a moment. "But if there's one person I know who won't think that hope will make everything better, it's Charles."

Tony watched a bit of realization sink across Erik's face.

"No... you're right, obviously." Erik sighed. "Still, I'm not asking you to lie, just don't volunteer it?"

"I'll see what I can do."

Tony's resolve didn't need to last that long, thankfully, and he avoided the topic with great aplomb for the most part.

"I miss him," Charles confided on Friday morning. "I think he's avoiding me."

"Did you tell him off again?"

Charles stretched awkwardly from his position on his bed. "No... I just... I think he knows I've been thinking about it, though. Maybe he's trying to duck out of another fight."

"Maybe he's trying to sort out his head."

"I didn't know you were being charitable towards him."

"He finally apologized to Anya for calling her a slut for dating me. I'm feeling charitable."

"A slut? His own sister?" Charles did not look pleased, Tony couldn't blame him, but he was biased. If Anya was going to forgive his brother, Tony generally had to follow suit.

"I think it was more directed at me, and everyone seems slutty when you're not getting any."

"I want to be slutty," Charles moped.

Tony gave him a peck on the forehead. "Hopefully he can figure out how much he wants to be slutty with you, and soon."

The two of them curled up in bed. "Do you remember when we were undergrads?"

"You mean when we both got regular sex instead of dating a virgin and a gayvirgin and had all this brimming tension and things?"

"Yeah. I miss those days."

"That was five months ago." Charles responded with a noise that said that Tony's thought was irrelevant. "I told Anya I loved her."

"Wait. What?"

Charles looked... terrified. Tony scooted next to Charles so their hips were touching. "I love her. Just... she makes me want to be real, and not full of crap. And Westmarck issues not withstanding, you're the only other person I've ever wanted to change for."

Charles snorted, and then grabbed at him and the two of them clung together on Charles' bed. "I'm happy for you."

"And scared." Tony could tell.

"Very scared."

"Go on, Charles, be selfish. You don't do it enough."

"I'm worried you're leaving me behind." Charles laughed, grabbed Tony and pulled him tighter. "I thought I would have all the time in the world to find... other friends, a soulmate, everything, because you were..."

"A fuck up?"

The noise Charles made was a bit watery and pained. "A bit."

"Well, your idiot will come around. I don't think he deserves you, but I don't get a vote."

"No, you don't." 

They curled up for a bit, ignoring the other pressures of the day, Charles' hand running against Tony's back, making him relax and pretend there was absolutely nothing wrong here.

Charles finally spoke again, probably almost an hour later, while Tony had nearly dropped off to sleep. "Do you ever feel like you've been waiting your whole life for someone and then suddenly there they are?"

Tony still had to think about it, if only for a little while. "Yeah. Yeah I do."


End file.
